Café Central
Café Central is one of Vienna's traditional coffeehouses, occupying the ground floor of the Palais Ferstel on Herrengasse in the city's Innere Stadt. It matters because it became a meeting place for writers, scientists and thinkers who shaped the city's intellectual life.
History
Sources differ on the opening date, giving either 1860 or 1876. By the late nineteenth century it had become a central gathering point for Viennese intellectuals, partly after the closure of the Café Griensteidl. Regulars included Peter Altenberg, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Egon Friedell, Anton Kuh, Alfred Polgar, Leo Perutz, Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud.
The café was nicknamed the "Chess school" because many players used its upper floor for their games. Tarock card games were also played regularly, and Tapp Tarock was especially popular between the wars. The café closed at the end of the Second World War. In 1975, when the Palais Ferstel was renovated, it reopened in another part of the building, in a former bank counter area, and its rooms were fully refurbished again in 1986.
Culture
For decades the Central was a place to read, debate and spend long afternoons at a slow pace, in the manner of the Viennese coffeehouse. Alfred Polgar described it less as an ordinary café than as a way of seeing the world, an idea that still helps explain its appeal. Today it serves both as a tourist attraction and as a café frequented by locals and visitors, and its literary past remains visible in its decor and in the city's memory.
Legend and fact
A well-known anecdote tells of a senior Austrian figure who, asked about revolution in Russia, replied that the revolutionary might be "Mr. Bronstein" sitting at the Café Central, a reference to Leon Trotsky. Sources attribute the remark to different people, Heinrich Clam-Martinic or Victor Adler. Trotsky did live in Vienna as an emigre and frequented the café, but the scene should be treated as an anecdote rather than a documented event.